The Signal is Calling
by SCWLC
Summary: How in the heck did Lightspeed Rescue figure out how to get access to the Morphing Grid? No idea on genre choices here, people.


Title: The Signal is Calling

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: If you recognise it, I don't own it.

Rating: PG

Summary: How in the heck did Lightspeed Rescue figure out how to get access to the Morphing Grid?

Notes: I have headcanon. This is some of it. I would not even begin to pretend to call this anything but something I like to imagine happened. As for the technicals of how the morphing grid and whatever else works, those are the working concepts I use and you can totally take or leave them as an interpretive model for how the power works. You can also decide for yourselves if you see Tommy as an addict who needs help or something else. I side with Tommy's interpretation, but that's just me.

* * *

This had to be the most aggravating thing his parents had ever done to him under the pretext of doing things for him. Tommy paused outside the small military base just in the outskirts of Mariner Bay, glaring up at the building in annoyance.

His uncle Peter, career Navy, had heard the elder Olivers complaining about how their son lacked focus and was drifting in life. He'd expended some of his personal influence to get Tommy an internship on the base, getting records digitised and whatever else the people there were going to ask him to do. The usual stuff you gave to students so that you could get filing done on the cheap or whatever.

One of the reasons Tommy hadn't put up more of a fuss was that he was aware he'd been drifting. The moment he'd taken up the Turbo powers, he'd felt it. His time as a Ranger was running out. He hadn't said anything, letting his racing take up more of his time, but he'd felt it coming. A result of the way that Rita had given him the Green Ranger powers initially, he had more sensitivity to the power of the Morphing Grid, something that meant he'd known before Jason did that he was leaving, had known upon seeing Rocky, Adam and Aisha that they were important, somehow. The only one of the Zeo Rangers with the ability to handle the ever-increasing power of the Zeo morphers without suffering physical illness from the overload, Tommy had known that was the reason for the retirement of those powers.

He always knew.

He'd known that Turbo was going to be the last of his time as a Ranger, and had chosen to go into racing to keep from thinking about it. He'd never seen himself doing anything but being a Ranger for the rest of his life, and while he knew that the Grid had chosen those four to replace himself and the others for some reason, it rankled. It rankled because he could tell that it had something to do with that new Red Ranger he'd seen running around Angel Grove, and he admitted privately to himself that he could never have taken second place to another Ranger. After all, he wasn't really Red either, he was a Sixth, something that made you less of a colour and more of an addition.

But these were things he'd never been able to discuss with anyone but Zordon, because if there was one thing he knew from talking to other Rangers, the only one who ever came close to understanding these things was Adam. And Adam tried a lot harder than Tommy to have a 'real' life.

So, while he was resentful at this interruption of his attempts to keep the sting of the loss of his calling, his vocation, from eating him alive, he understood, and could even appreciate in an intellectual sort of way, the effort his uncle had gone to. So, he squared his shoulders and walked into the building for his first day of this mind-numbing internship, the comforting feeling of the Zeo morpher strapped to his wrist.

* * *

Captain Mitchell was beginning to despair of ever creating that team of Power Rangers to handle the demons he knew were coming. He never quite knew how he'd convinced his superiors of their existence, just that he was grateful to have point on finding and creating a defense for when the things broke loose.

Had it already been five years since he'd first seen those Power Rangers in Angel Grove and known he'd found the source or inspiration for a means of protecting people? The moment he'd seen them, he'd known this was it. This strange, alien technology, these brightly coloured defenders of humanity, the power and combined offensive and defensive capabilities were what he knew was going to be needed.

He'd given a lot of consideration to speaking to the Power Rangers, asking their help, but he'd seen that they had enemies, he'd seen the sorts of defeats they'd suffered and the new teams that had appeared to replace the old ones, previous teams vanishing without a trace, quite possibly dead. No. He needed a team there in Mariner Bay, so that when they needed Rangers they could call on their own without worrying that there would be some poor folks getting stuck fighting a war on two fronts.

Passing the front desk he nodded a greeting to Tommy Oliver, the young man Colonel Oliver had exercised his nepotism over to get a temporary position on the base. The youth was pleasant enough, although Mitchell could hear the resentful undertones in the kid's voice. He'd been backed into the spot as much as the people on base had been in taking him, and from what he'd heard Tommy had a career in car racing he'd been hoping to get back to, or failing that, something in competitive martial arts. Either way, he was a hard worker, did what he was told and there was no reason to harass the kid over it.

Another long day of reviewing reports that said the same thing over and over again, no one knew how the Rangers produced their armour, no one knew where their robots came from or how they worked, no one could attach a power source to anything that would manage what he was asking. It just wasn't possible, technologically, for humans. That ended at about ten that morning.

Tommy's voice rang through the air, sharp, loud and as commanding as anything he'd ever heard from trained military officers. "Turn up the radio."

"_It would seem that Angel Grove has been under an unexpected communication blackout, as that blackout has just ended. Aliens have landed in Angel Grove and are attacking. The Power Rangers are on the ground, but the numbers they face are so overwhelming that civilians have joined in the fight. Word is out that the foot soldiers, known as quantrons and pirhanatrons, are being seen in towns outside of the normal epicentre of Angel Grove and the local government suggests everyone stay indoors and attempt to keep themselves away from the attacks as best they can."_

The boy's face was pale and his lips were pressed together as he gathered his things, clearly planning to leave, probably for his hometown. Before Mitchell could take more than two steps to try to convince him that it was a bad idea, the doors shattered inward and the alien foot soldiers entered the building.

Only two shots with his sidearm, both of which struck dead centre mass and did absolutely nothing, told him that there was no point in trying that, and he started shouting. "Everyone! Evacuate! Let's clear out!"

He noted in vague approval that Tommy was just as effective at clearing people as the properly trained Navy officers and recruits, moving the civilians along, keeping people from foolish heroics. Even more impressive was his reaction to being cornered by the quantrons. With a sharp cry he leapt into the crowd of robotic . . . things, turning into a whirling dervish of fists and feet, flattening the things and clearing a path for those less capable.

Everyone was out of the building and racing for cars to get the hell away when Mitchell realised something. Tommy wasn't with them. In fact, his hastily racing memory suddenly provided him with a mental snapshot of Tommy Oliver setting himself up to block the hall to the back exit, like a Spartan facing down the Persian army at a narrow pass. In fact, he realised that there were no quantrons following, and his admiration grew, then vanished in a sick fear of having to tell Colonel Oliver and his family that young Tommy had fallen in the line of duty, a duty which he hadn't even signed up for.

Racing back through the halls, he saw a monster the likes of which he'd only before seen on broadcasts from Angel Grove facing off with Tommy, who was in the grips of quantrons and struggling. "So," said the monster, "You think you can best me, human?"

Calm, as though he truly believed it, Tommy said, "I don't think I can, I know I can. I've seen worse than you."

He backflipped, using the sudden change in directional forces to break the grips of the creatures on his arms, then suddenly struck a strange pose, his arms whirling through the air, streaks of red light following them. "Zeo Ranger Five! Red!"

A flash of light, and Mitchell was staring, stunned, at the apparition before him. It was the Red Zeo Ranger. Tommy Oliver was the Red Zeo Ranger. A thousand questions spun through his mind, but he didn't voice any of them as the already incredible fighting machine of a young man turned into a deadly warrior. A sword in his hands, he tore through the creatures before him.

The monster gave him more trouble, but he kept on fighting, in a brief moment when he'd driven the monster off, he was kept from following up the advantage by a beeping from his wrist. "Tommy here," he said into it.

"Are you okay?" demanded a male voice. "I could have sworn . . ."

"There's a monster out here in Mariner Bay," Tommy informed the other man, whoever he was. "I'm okay so far. I'll call if I need help."

The fight resumed. "You'd better," said a second male voice. Now that Mitchell was listening more carefully, the two voices seemed to be in a fight themselves. "We're hanging in there, I just hope we don't have to morph."

Ducking and weaving, Tommy said, "Yeah, the Zeo-"

"They're too strong, I know," said the voice. "Trust me, one visit to the doctor with a warning about arrhythmia is more than enough for me."

"Good," Tommy said, as though he weren't courting a heart attack just by standing there in his red armour. "Catch you on the flip side." He threw himself into the fight, striking a winning blow just moments before some sort of wave of energy passed through everything, melting the quantrons and everything else into nothing and causing something in the Ranger's uniform to short out, turning him back into the handsome, but otherwise fairly unexceptional-looking kid.

With a look of confusion on his face, Tommy began calling a large number of people on the strange wristwatch he always wore. No one seemed to know anything, and it seemed as though it was the perfect time to step in. "You always have to worry about causing yourself permanent physical harm when you become a Power Ranger?" he asked.

Tommy whipped around, looking first predatory, then worried. "What do you mean?" he bluffed.

"I came back when I realised you meant to hold this position and keep the forces back on your own," Mitchell told him. "You're not one of the military, you didn't sign up to defend this country. I couldn't let you do that, even less on your own." He watched Tommy's eyes flicker back and forth as though looking for an escape route. "Imagine my surprise to see you not only hold your own, but turn into the Red Zeo Ranger."

The young man sagged. "Three rules," he said distantly. "Three rules. Never use the power for your own gain, never escalate a fight and always keep the secret." Then he chuckled, sounding darkly amused. "We're only so good at keeping the last one. People catch you at the wrong moment, it's too important and you just don't have the chance to get out of it because you have to go, now." He looked up at Mitchell. "I had to tell my brother just to keep him from running off to rescue me."

"Why those rules?" Mitchell wanted to know.

Shrugging, Tommy said, "The first two are kind of obvious, don't you think? There's a lot to abuse in being a Ranger. The ability to be morphed, take off the boots and helmet and things and you could hide the morph under clothes. Get into the Pan Globals, show off for girls, conquer a small country . . ." he trailed off with a shrug.

"Fair enough," Mitchell said, coming the rest of the way in and settling a hip on a table. "But the secrecy?"

"It's harder to abuse celebrity when you can't really take advantage of it," Tommy said, "I guess. There's also just the suspicion of the regular police and things. When we first started as Rangers a lot of people didn't know if we were just another edition of the monsters attacking. Better to keep ourselves from trouble with the government. And we didn't want to be some sort of national institution. We were protecting people from the invasions. I'm sure Zordon has other reasons for the rules, but he can be pretty cagey."

"Zordon?" Mitchell wanted to know.

Tommy shook his head. "I'm sorry, but there's only so much I feel free to say. I'm not the only one and telling others shouldn't be a decision I make for anyone else."

Operational security was something anyone in the military understood. "Fair enough. But now that I've found out, I-"

He was interrupted by a beeping from the wristwatch, clearly a communicator of some kind. "Tommy here, what's up?"

There was a sound of heavy breathing a moment, then something like a choked sob. "Tommy? It's . . . they said . . ." It was a woman.

"Zordon?" Tommy looked wide-eyed. "What happened?" He seemed about to say something else, but clearly thought better of it, perhaps because of his audience.

"He's dead," said the woman.

The young man's legs seemed to give out and he staggered into a wall before hitting the floor. "He's . . . how? When? _Who?_"

"Andros says . . . He says Zordon made him, that . . . did you see the quantrons and everything else dissolve?" asked the woman.

Nodding, even though she couldn't see him, Tommy rasped out, "Yeah. What's that got to do with . . ." he trailed off, clearly unable to speak of this Zordon. His hands were wrapped around his knees, and Mitchell was struck by how young he looked. Most of the time Tommy looked fairly normal, maybe a little older than his real age due to an air of maturity he gave off. When he'd been fighting the quantrons and evacuating he'd looked older. Veteran and trained and the equal of any soldier Mitchell had ever worked with.

Now he suddenly looked like a child who'd lost a parent, and it was fatherly instinct that prompted the older man to drop down next to Tommy, wrap an arm around his shoulders and hold him through an explanation about how Andros, apparently the Red Space Ranger, had been forced to kill this man, Zordon, because the energy released in that moment would defeat all the monsters attacking the Earth. It was incredible, but the seriousness with which Tommy took the news told him that it was most likely factual.

"I'm calling everyone," the woman said. "We're going to meet at the Command Chamber, where it was, I mean, and . . ." her voice cracked before she seemed to make herself go on. "We'll have a memorial. Adam says . . . says Carlos told him they could collect Aisha and . . . and anyone else who's not close by."

Other Rangers? Mitchell wondered. Tommy took in a deep breath and managed somehow, even with tears streaming down his face, to sound calm and like the commander he must have been, "That sounds good. I'll be driving in, let me know if I need to pick someone up. And pass along to Andros that I'll want to talk to him."

She seemed to take strength from his display, even just over the communicator. "Will do. It's going to be asap, of course."

"Of course. Jason's parents have camping gear you can collect, so do most of us, actually," Tom told her. "Get a move on and I'll see you all there. May the Power protect you," he finished.

"Zordon you ain't, Tommy. May the Power protect you," she said with a small, almost unforced laugh.

Then he clicked the communicator off and started shaking. Mitchell didn't know quite who and what Zordon was, just that he was important to this young man who was having a breakdown. After far too short a time, Tommy pulled himself together. "I need to head back to Angel Grove," he told Mitchell. "I'm sure you have questions, but I can't," he paused, keeping himself under strict control. "I can't answer them right now."

"Of course not," Mitchell said. "Take your leave time, I'll tell people you've suffered a loss in the attacks on Angel Grove and you have to be back for the funeral. They won't ask any questions. But I need to when you're back," he told the Red Zeo Ranger.

Tommy nodded in a sharp, almost military fashion, and then strode out the door and into the sun.

* * *

Just three days later he arrived at the base to see Tommy in his accustomed place at the front desk. There was something shadowing his eyes and Mitchell didn't have to ask to know that it was Zordon. The Space Rangers had exposed themselves, making their identities public, and the story of Zordon of Eltar had been told to the media.

Considering the dates the Zeo Rangers had been active and who Zordon had been according to Andros, the Red Ranger from some other planet known as KO-35, it would seem likely that Tommy and his fellow rangers had lost something of a general, mentor and father figure rolled into one. As he passed Tommy's desk, he said, "Tom, do you mind dropping into my office at your convenience?"

"Sure," the young man Mitchell couldn't help but see as the Red Zeo Ranger responded.

An hour later he was ushering Tommy into a seat and saying, "I have a lot of questions, Tom, but the first I have to ask you is, do you think you can help us, or do you know anyone who can help us create a force of Power Rangers here in Mariner Bay?"

Unsurprisingly, Tommy looked suspicious. "Why?"

"About ten years ago," Mitchell explained, "I discovered something. There's something underneath this city, and it will break free within the next couple years. I don't really know what these demons want, and they do call themselves demons, but it doesn't seem to be anything good."

There was a long pause, Tommy staring at him, eyes narrowed. He seemed to be searching for something, because when he found it, he relaxed and said, "I'm no tech, but I can certainly point you down a few roads or put you in contact with someone if need be."

It was what he'd been hoping for. "The first thing we need to know, Tom, is how the hell those suits get generated," he said. "No one I've hired can produce a power source to run them and if we need the alien technology to make it happen, if we need some sort of magical hoodoo, no one can figure it out."

"Then you haven't discovered the Morphing Grid," Tom said, leaning forward. "Because that's the power source. A morpher," he held out an arm and twisted the wrist sharply, causing a technological wristband of some kind to suddenly appear there, "has its own power source, but the ultimate draw of power is from the Grid. The power you put into the morpher is the limit on the power you can draw from the Grid. The more powerful the morpher, the more power is drawn from the Grid."

"I heard that friend of yours talking about arrhythmia," Mitchell said slowly. "Your . . . morpher you called it? Is it causing you . . . damage?"

Tommy shook his head. "I'm . . . unusual," he explained. "Of the five of the Zeo team, I'm the only one who's got the ability to channel the kind of power the Zeo crystals are putting out. I underwent a . . ." he shook his head. "Years ago I was captured and the spells put on me altered some things about my basic physical makeup. I have the channels to handle the added power, at least for now. The others don't. It's the main reason we had to retire these morphers." He sighed. "And since a single ranger does not a team make, I'm basically out of the biz."

There were some things he wasn't saying, but the one thing Mitchell knew was that you didn't press an ally in the first days of alliance. He'd ask again later, when there was more trust between them, and this information that there was a grid of some kind they needed access to was more than he'd had before by a long shot. "So, how do you get access to this grid, then?"

The explanation went over Mitchell's head in no time, and he was forced to stop Tommy, instead telling him he was going to be moved out of his current position and into a consultant position on Project Power. By the next week, the entire science team had been reenergised with Tommy's information, advice and explanations. He'd let them borrow his morpher, dire warnings that he wanted it back in one piece and all, then had requisitioned a submarine to take their lead scientist, Angela Fairweather, down to look at the Green Ranger's giant robot, which he called a zord.

He spent time with the workers, tinkering away at the zords, as he insisted on calling them as well. The name stuck.

The whole time he'd keep half referencing other people, saying they were smarter and more gifted than he was. Given that many of the people there had difficulty believing Tommy had no degrees to his name with his understanding of the machines and processes going on, Mitchell often wondered who these people were that were so brilliant, or if Tommy just had low self-esteem.

It wasn't until the day he began to try working out how to recruit people that he was given a completely different understanding of the Power Rangers. He'd already determined a list of officers for the position, when Tommy arrived at his office in the renamed Lightspeed Rescue marine base. "Captain?" he said, pausing in the door.

It was something he'd had to become used to with Tommy. The moment he'd begun treating the other as a professional, as the Power Ranger that he was, there had been a complete abandonment of the self-effacement normally practiced by the now-twentysomething. Tommy Oliver's sheer presence alone was enough to force anyone he met to treat him as an equal at minimum, and he did the same to everyone else. He was unfailingly polite, but he did not fit into any system of authority, and it was clear that he knew it. Any behaviour otherwise was unnatural to him and something he did because he maintained the secrecy of his having been a Ranger. "What is it, Tom?"

"We need to talk about who you're going to give those new morphers to," he said. "Because scuttlebutt says you've got officers lined up, and there are a couple things you need to know about the Morphing Grid."

Raising an eyebrow, because like Tommy he didn't like being dictated to, Mitchell said, "Then pull up a chair, because I can't see how I can do worse than asking a bunch of high school kids to be superheroes."

Lips pressed together in sudden annoyance, Tommy sat down, then said shortly. "The Grid is sentient."

That was unexpected. "What?"

"Oh, it's not a human intelligence," Tommy said airily, waving a hand. "It really doesn't think in a way that you or I would consider thinking, but it _does_ think. When the Eltarians created it all those millennia ago, they made a magitechnical AI, and it's programmed to give the Power to people it deems worthy."

"Are you saying you expect to be one of the new team?" Mitchell asked. He wouldn't exactly complain about having a veteran Power Ranger head up his team, but Tommy was headstrong, and frankly he expected that they'd butt heads far too often to work together effectively.

Again he was surprised. "No," Tommy shook his head. "I can't. The Power here isn't meant for me. I'd know if it were."

"Is this because of that . . . that spell stuff you told me about back when I first asked you about the Zeo morpher?" Mitchell wanted to know.

A shrug. "Roughly. Look, the reason Rangers come in colours is because those colours represent personalities. Red is the leader. It doesn't mean if you assign Lucy McCutcheon the Red morpher she's designated the leader, it means that the person who will emerge from the group, naturally, as the leader, they'll be the one to wear it. It won't work right for someone else."

"Meaning that if I give her the team to lead, despite her authority, if there's someone who's got the right personality, they'll be the only ones able to use the red morpher?" Mitchell was incredulous.

Tommy grimaced, but nodded. "If you try to give those morphers to _anyone_ the Power doesn't think is right, they won't work right. That's _why_ my friends and I were chosen," he explained. "The Power picked us, and Zordon was enough in touch with the Power to know who we were."

"You're not suggesting I start hiring minors, are you?" he asked, horrified. It was one thing when a 10,000 year old alien was doing the picking. Who the hell knew what went on there? But he'd be damned if he sent schoolchildren out into the field. The look on Tommy's face spoke of someone who was insulted by a perceived slight.

Then Tommy relaxed. "Not exactly," he said. "For one thing, you're going to be the team's mentor and the person who's acting as the general. The compatibility will have to be with you as well," he said. "No. I wanted to be the one to pick candidates."

"You're going to read the Grid's mind?" he asked, wryly. He was only a little surprised when Tommy nodded.

"Pretty much," he said. "I've been looking around, picking out some people from a few places."

There were some pretty interesting candidates, including the young Carter Grayson, someone Mitchell had had an eye on over the years. He was surprised to see his daughter on the list, though. "Why Dana?" he asked.

"The medic training," Tommy said, "It's indicative of a few things about her personality. Also, when I met her last week, she . . ." he flushed a little. "This isn't going to sound right, but a lot of Rangers think of people in colours. You're a Red, Ms Fairweather's very Blue, but there's some strong Yellow in her as well. Dana's . . . Pink. And it's strong. Like K-" he cut himself off as he always did when mentioning other rangers.

"Cassie Chan?" asked Mitchell.

"Her too," Tommy said distractedly. Then he turned his attention back to Mitchell. "The point is, the Grid tends to interfere with people. Poking at the subconscious, making sure we wind up where we need to be. Somewhere in that list are five people who are supposed to be Rangers."

Looking more carefully, Mitchell noted that Tommy had already noted colours, and was clearly restraining himself from putting down more notes. "You're sure about this?" he asked. "Because the people I picked are good people."

"I'm sure they are," Tommy said. "But there's a mentality to being a Ranger. You need to know exactly where to draw the line, you need to know how to handle being a one-man army, or one-woman army," he said with a wry smile. "You need to be able to get back up no matter what and you need to be open enough to let the Grid show you what you need to do."

He'd mentioned that before, that the Grid could literally give people the skills they needed to be a Ranger, whether or not they were a good choice on paper. "I'll give due consideration," he told Tommy.

The next time they talked was when the project was complete and just waiting for the inevitable escape of the demons. There'd been rumblings and portents and a rash of fires and accidents that had the fingerprints of the demons all over them. With his part in Lightspeed now complete, Tommy had been studiously avoiding any discussion of his further plans. Mitchell had told him pointedly that he should try doing something that wasn't being a Power Ranger, because he'd done it since high school and maybe he should try getting himself a life. He'd rolled his eyes, jokingly asking if Mitchell had any suggestions about what he should do.

Dana had pointedly told her father, after being told she was to be the Lightspeed Pink Ranger when things happened and let in on everything he knew of Tommy's past, that Mitchell was the closest Tommy was going to get to good solid parental advice about his life. At least, someone who could give advice and also knew about the giant Power Ranger-coloured elephant in Tommy's past.

She was right, too, which was why he wound up knocking on Tommy's apartment door. He hadn't been living with his family ever since he'd gotten the pay raise that went with the top secret Lightspeed program, supposedly because he didn't want to have to explain over the dinner table what was going on without being able to tell the truth. When Tommy opened the door, the waft of alcohol on his breath suggested to Mitchell there might have been more to it.

Normally the young man wore red, a lot of it, informing Mitchell that it was one of the strange things about Power Rangers, their inability to shed their signature colours, even out of uniform. He didn't know why.

Tonight he was wearing green, head to toe. In his hand, a coin was flipping around the fingers, restlessly, as though he was under some sort of compulsion. "Evening," he said. "What brings you by?"

"Dana thinks I should talk to you about what you're doing next after this," he said.

Tommy tilted his head a moment, then gestured Mitchell in, heading for a comfortable chair in the living room area, scooping up a bottle from an end table next to it and taking a swig before saying with patently false brightness, "Take a seat. Do you want anything to drink?"

"No," Mitchell said, and deliberately crossed the room, collecting the bottle and putting the cap back on. "And I suspect you shouldn't have anything else either."

A breathy laugh was his answer. "Cut me off. Everyone cuts me off," Tommy said, bitterly. "Please, have a seat."

"What do you mean, everyone cuts you off?" Mitchell asked.

Tommy froze, then seemed to come to a decision. He sat, then tossed the coin at Mitchell. "What do you think of that?"

He looked at it. "Antique coin," he said. "Don't know much about them."

"My first Power Coin," Tommy corrected. "Waaaaaaaaay back." He leaned back, eyes bright with something. Tears, anger, it was hard to tell. "Of course, I didn't get called like everyone else. I'm heading home when Rita – you know Rita, evil witch," he said.

"The person the original rangers fought," Mitchell said. "What did she do?"

"Kidnapped me," Tommy said, carelessly. As though it was normal. To him it clearly was. "Cast a spell or six. Made me evil, made me work for her, made me the Green Ranger."

The father in him balked. "You were fourteen!" he half shouted, appalled.

"I was," Tommy said. A smirk crossed his face. "Helluva time we had," he said. "Me and the team. I mean, once they stopped me from being evil and all. Then she took them away," he said bitterly. "I once asked Zordon why it hurt me so much when it didn't hurt Jase and the others and he said it was because of how Rita made me. I'm too hooked into the Power. When I get cut off from it, when I'm not part of a team, it hurts. Because she connected me to it and I can feel _everything_. All the other teams, all the other things going on within a fair ambit of Earth. Because I'm half in and half out of the Grid all the time."

He sounded like an addict, and Mitchell wondered, but from everything else he'd heard, especially after Tommy had found him other former Rangers to talk to who were willing to discuss the matter, this was something unique to Tommy. He recalled the look on Tommy's face when he'd asked if the young man wanted to take up the Lightspeed morpher, and realised that he'd been keeping himself from saying yes because he knew it would be detrimental. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that all Rangers have a heightened and preternatural connection to their teams. It's how we get such perfect synchronicity. It's an awareness when the rest are in trouble, something that's amplified in Reds because they . . . we . . . are responsible for the team." He sighed. "But I have that with everyone I've ever been a Ranger with, I have it with the Astro team because I'm aware of them from when we passed the Turbo Powers over to them, there's something going on out on Terra Venture that I'm trying to ignore because there's a Red Ranger and a Green Ranger and I can feel a Sixth Ranger and it just . . ." his fingers found their way into his long hair a moment, pulling slightly. "It's oversensitivity and there isn't anything I can do about it."

"I brought you back in," Mitchell said slowly in realisation. "All this time you've been working around Power Ranger things and it's made you pay attention, hasn't it?"

Tommy shook his head. "It's okay. It's easier when I'm around it. I'm around the Power. I can feel it and know it's there and it helps. But now," a shaky breath and a longing look at the bottle or rotgut Mitchell had no intention of handing back, "I've been cut off again."

"What did you mean by Turbo Powers?" Mitchell asked. Now was his chance to understand Tommy, while the poor kid's defenses were down.

Another bitter laugh escaped him. "Get the Power, lose the Power. Get it back, lose it again. Then I got all brand new powers."

"Zeo?"

"White Ranger," Tommy corrected with a smile. Mitchell felt his breath hiss against his teeth. "I was the Green Ranger, then the Power was taken. Then I got it back, then it was taken. Then I was the White Ranger, then we all lost our Powers and we went on this quest and got the Ninjetti Powers and I was the White Falcon, but when we completed the morph we'd be in the old armour. Then we lost everything." He snorted. "Well, I lost Kim, my Pink Crane." He looked lost a moment, then an angry look. "But that's just because she wrote that letter dumping me from Florida, because I'm like her brother." Another snort. "Because you let your brother get to third base with you. Right."

"Ouch," Mitchell said. Because he'd heard of Dear John letters, but never one in which someone would tell an ex that they were like a sibling.

"Damn straight," Tommy said. "But that happened after. We had to get new powers when the old ones went with the Command Centre. Kaboom!" he said, wryly. "We lost a lot of headquarters to things blowing up," he said absently. "But we had to go after the Zeo crystals before the Rita and Zedd got them, before the Machine Empire got them." He rolled his head back, staring at the ceiling. "Amazing power rush," he said. "Zeo crystals defy entropy. They always get stronger. There were only five, though. And I wanted so bad to tell Rocky he should leave, he should give it to Billy, because Billy was all that was left, you know? The originals. The first. Sometimes I feel like they were the only real ones, but it's wrong because it's not fair to anyone else."

Thinking it all over, looking at this kid, because that was all he was in a lot of ways, just a kid, and Mitchell wanted to hug the boy and tell him it would be okay. Wanted to stop this parade of heartache, because the mental timeline he was constructing had all this happening to someone who hadn't even graduated high school yet. "You didn't, though."

"No. It was Billy's decision," Tommy said. "And I became Red. I don't really like being Red. I was Green first and I miss it. I liked White best, but Green was simple back then. Easy." Leaning forward now, he told Mitchell, "That was when I found out about the connection, when Zordon explained that my connection was why they'd been able to build me the White Tigerzord coin and why it hurt me to lost my powers in a way it didn't hurt anyone else. I mean, when your power gets stripped it'll hurt no matter what. So does forcible demorphing. But week and months later you shouldn't feel an ache in your bones from where the Power ought to be. But I do."

Trying to keep him moving forward, if only in his head, Mitchell prompted, "After Zeo was Turbo. You were a Turbo Ranger too?"

"Yeah," Tommy said. "We had to move on, the others couldn't channel the Zeo crystals anymore without being hurt. And then time was up. The Grid knew I'd never be Blue to Andros' Red, so I had to go. We all had to go for the sake of the Astro Rangers to be."

"They used to be the Turbo Rangers?" Mitchell asked. "You're saying you passed those morphers on because the Grid made you do it?"

"Well," Tommy looked wry again. "The Grid through our mentor, Dimitria, made us do it, but yeah."

"So what are you going to do now?" he asked.

"Go back to racing," Tommy told him. "Try to stop feeling that ache in my bones from being cut off." There was a very long pause. "I probably shouldn't have told you any of this."

"I think you needed to tell someone for a long time," Mitchell said. "And you feel that, as the CO of so many of the rangers, you can't tell them about it."

"There is that," Tommy was mendacious as he spoke.

"But I still think you need to let it go, Tommy," he told the Ranger. "You need to see something in the world that's not cars or Power Rangers."

"No!" Tommy bolted to his feet, off balance from the liquor, but still graceful. "I . . . one time I was reading this biography. Of a priest, right? And he talked about how being a priest was a calling. Something he couldn't _not_ do. Being a Ranger, it's like that. It's a vocation. It's who I _am_."

And he believed it, that much Mitchell knew. And maybe he was right. There was nothing like the self-assurance and calm Tommy had when working with Ranger things. But at the same time, was that just because it was all he knew? "If it's really meant to be, you'll find your way back to it," Mitchell told him. "But maybe you need to get away from all this so you'll know you're not just doing this because you don't know anything else. You were too young when you started doing this and you need to get out. Just long enough to know that you're right about it."

"Hmmph." It was, perhaps, the most immature and pouting thing Mitchell had ever seen Tommy do, and in its way it was reassuring.

"Just think about it," he said. Then he started steering Tommy to the door. "You're also not staying here alone overnight. You're going to sleep it off in my guest room where I can keep an eye on you."

When they got back to his house, Dana was waiting and looking clearly sceptical of Tommy's state. Tommy took one look at her and declared that he was going to bed because he was too drunk to deal with a Pink, they just tried to break his heart anyhow.

The next day found Tommy looking at a National Geographic with an arrested look on his face and commenting that maybe Mitchell had been right.

* * *

The problem with the good captain's advice, Tommy felt, was that it was impossible to explain to him what it was like to nearly hear the Morphing Grid whisper in your ear. It wasn't that he didn't want to retire, it was that Rangering was who he was. He wanted to shift his role off the front lines and maybe to mentoring. He wasn't good enough to make it as a tech.

He wanted to not be the guy who came home with bruises on top of bruises and who had to stand between everyone and Certain Death, Doom and Destruction.

The thing that he didn't know, was whether he could bring himself to step back from that. What he knew was the doing of Rangering, not the mentoring. And there was a very strong part of him that missed that synchronicity that came with being a ranger. The way those people knew you better than you knew yourself, could always anticipate what you needed in the same way you could for them.

But he had a new direction now, he'd seen it in that magazine lying on the Mitchell kitchen counter. Anton Mercer had found something mixed in with dinosaur bones. Coloured gems carbon dated to the time of the dinosaurs.

He'd always liked dinosaurs and maybe he should head for university. His grades had been good enough and Captain Mitchell would no doubt be able to give him a decent letter of recommendation or two. Those might even let him get in close to Mercer.

There was a smile on his lips as he felt the Grid hum in approval.


End file.
